BUFFON 387 



was he really a zoologist ? Linnaeus never quoted him, 

 or seemed to know that he existed. Reaumur instigated 

 the anonymous Lettres a un Americain, in which the 

 Abbe de Lignac treated Buffon with scorn. Linnaeus 

 and Reaumur had personal reasons for disliking Buffon, 

 but the adverse opinion of judges so eminent, however 

 it might be explained, was damaging in a high degree. 

 The majority of professed naturalists in France, Germany, 

 and England held that no loftiness of thought and 

 diction, no liveliness in description, no startling theories 

 of creation could atone for Buffon's contempt of system, 

 or for the blunders which disfigured his pages. Many 

 contrasted the accuracy of Daubenton with the careless- 

 ness of Buffon, or said with D'Alembert that Buffon was 

 ^' le grand phrasier, le roi des phrasiers." 



With the general reading public the case was very 

 different. Buffon's handsome and costly volumes sold 

 in large editions throughout his long life. The Histoire 

 Naturelle was not only bought but read, and all those 

 passages which a thoughtful reader, ignorant of zoological 

 details, could understand were studied and remembered. 

 Men of letters, such as Diderot and Gibbon, spread his 

 fame. Gray thought that his general view of the surface 

 of the earth and of the nations which occupy it was the 

 best epitome of geography which he had ever met with. 

 What Buffon had to say about the expectation of human 

 life at different ages, about the duration of life in animals 

 and its ratio to the duration of the period of growth, 

 about the history of the earth and the history of con- 

 tinents, entered into the common stock of knowledge. 



Having got the ear of mankind, Buffon so used bis 



opportunity as to heighten their interest in natural 



history. During the first half of the eighteenth century 



science had already made good its claim to the attention 



2b2 



